Lucas Abela needs your help to create an army of tiny noise artists

Sydney artist Lucas Abela‘s transition from glass blowing noise lunatic to installation artist has been fascinating. Whilst calling it a transition is somewhat misleading as he still performs face tearing (literally!) feedback on a plate of glass around town periodically, his focus in recent times does seem to be on his installation work. From a remote controlled car rally across a bunch of vinyl records (The vinyl rally), to his musical pinball machines (Temple of Din), they’re all immediate, performative and somewhat nostalgic. More recently he’s been turning playground equipment into electronic musical instruments, hoping to inspire a new generation of tiny noise makers.

He began with the Feedback Swingset (2018), [a swing that produces syncopated rhythms of microphone feedback as children swing over speakers, that they can further manipulate via audio processors built into toddler play-stations that bend and steer the sounds in seemingly magical ways]and more recently Fort Thunder (2018), [a touch play synthesiser built into a play-fort that generates electronic bleeps and blurts as touch intersects twenty-two metal poles, producing sound by replacing circuitry components with human bodies, the resistance and capacitance of which controls the timbre of the audio]. It debuted earlier this year at The Fairfield Gallery, with the fort going on to be shown at the prestigious, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz Austria, and is booked to be shown at the National, New Australian Art exhibition at the MCA.

During its exhibition in Melbourne torrential rain ruined Fort Thunder causing Abela to look to rebuild, resulting in an extreme cost blowout whilst attempting to get it ready for the MCA. To get it finished he needs our help. He’s set up an Indiegogo site with a bunch of perks, such as a subsciption to his digital music service and a crackle box, which he describes as ‘a circuit bent am radio that kinda inspired Fort Thunder.’

But forget the perks. Just help the guy out, after all he’s doing it for the children…In an attempt to find the next Merzbow.